We are currently undergoing updates to our site and are working to improve your experience on all devices that you use throughout your day. If you should find a page or a story that is not working correctly, please click here.

Thank you for your patience,

TribLIVE.com Team

HARRISBURG — Jerry Sandusky wants Pennsylvania's highest court to take up his appeal of a 45-count child sex abuse conviction, saying in a petition released Friday that the trial judge should have instructed jurors on the length of time it took victims to come forward.

The new filing repeated other arguments that were rejected a month ago by the midlevel Superior Court, including a claim that Sandusky's lawyers lacked sufficient time to prepare and that a prosecutor improperly referred to Sandusky's decision not to testify.

“This is a notorious case,” wrote his lawyers, Norris Gelman and Margeaux Cigainero. “It is a case that tests the limits of our ability to live up to the promise our Constitution makes that even in the worst of cases, a fair trial will be afforded.”

Gelman said Friday that it typically takes the Supreme Court two to seven months to decide whether it will grant a petition for allowance of appeal. If it does, the justices will establish a briefing schedule.

A spokesman for the attorney general's office, which prosecuted Sandusky, declined to comment.

The 59-page petition argues that Judge John Cleland's decision not to issue the “failure to make a prompt report” jury instruction was catastrophic to the defense strategy.

“It cut the heart out of (Sandusky)'s main defense,” they wrote. “Just as the court could not deny (him) the right to forward such as defense, it had no right to dilute it so seriously by refusing the instructions.”

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our
Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent
via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.